The Life of Faith Exemplified

Taken, with minor spelling and grammatical adaptations, from the fourth edition of Hymns and Sacred Poems (1743) by John and Charles Wesley (pp. 169-181):

Author of faith, Eternal Word,
Whose Spirit breathes the Active Flame,
Faith, like its Finisher and Lord,
Today, as yesterday the same.
To thee our humble hearts aspire,
And ask the gift unspeakable:
Increase in us the kindled fire,
In us the work of faith fulfill.
By faith we know thee strong to save,
(Save us, a present Savior, thou!)
Whatever we hope, by faith we have,
Future and past subsisting now.
To him that in thy name believes,
Eternal life with thee is given,
Into himself he all receives,
Pardon and happiness and heaven.
The things unknown to feeble sense,
Unseen by reason's glimmering ray,
With strong, commanding evidence
Their heavenly origin display.
Faith lends its realizing light,
The clouds disperse, the shadows fly,
The invisible appears in sight,
And God is seen by mortal eye.

By faith the holy men of old
Obtained a never-dying name,
The sacred leaves their praise unfold,
And God himself records their fame.
Through faith we know the worlds were made,
By his great Word to being brought:
He spake: the earth and heaven obeyed;
The universe sprang forth from nought.
The heavens thy glorious power proclaim,
If thou in us thy power declare;
We know from whom the fabric came,
Our heart believes, when God is there.
Thee through thyself we understand,
When thou in us thyself hast shown,
We see thine all-creating hand,
And feel a God through faith alone.

Believing in the woman's seed,
And justified by faith alone,
Abel a nobler offering made,
And God vouchsafed his gifts to own.
Witness divine he thus obtained,
The gift of righteousness received;
And now he wears the crown he gained,
And sees the Christ he once believed.
Still by his faith he speaks though dead,
He calls us to the Living Way;
We hear, and in his footsteps tread.
We first believe and then obey.

Exempted from the general doom,
The death which all are born to know,
Enoch obtained his heavenly home
By faith, and disappeared below.
From earth unpainfully released,
Translated to the realms of light,
He found the God by faith he pleased,
His faith was sweetly lost in sight.
God, without faith, we cannot please:
For all who unto God would come
Must feelingly believe he is
And gives to all their righteous doom.
We feelingly believe thou art:
Behold, we ever seek thee, Lord,
With all our mind, with all our heart,
And find thee now our great reward.

Divinely warned of judgments near,
Noah believed a threatening God,
With humble faith and holy fear
He built the ark and escaped the flood.
He--while the world that disbelieved,
The careless world of sinners, died--
The righteousness of faith received:
Noah by faith was justified.
We too by faith the world condemn,
Of righteousness divine possessed,
Escape the wrath that covers them,
Safe in the ark of Jesus' breast.

Obedient to his God's command,
And influence by his faith alone,
Abraham left his native land,
Went out and sought a place unknown.
A place he should possess at last,
When full four hundred years were over:
Upon the Word himself he cast,
He followed God and asked no more.
As in a strange though promised land,
A land his distant heirs received,
He and his sons in tents remained;
He knew in whom he had believed.
A better heritage he sought,
A city built by God on high,
Thither he raised his towering thought,
He fixed on heaven his steadfast eye.
Whose firm foundations never move,
Jerusalem was all his care,
The New Jerusalem above;
His treasure, and his heart was there.
And shall not we the call obey,
And haste where God commands to go?
Despise these tenements of clay,
These dreams of happiness below?
Yes, Lord, we hearken to thy call,
As sojourners over earth we rove,
We have for thee forsaken all,
And seek the heaven of perfect love.

By faith the handmaid of the Lord,
Sarah, received a power unknown,
She judged him faithful to his word;
Barren and old she bore a son.
Nature had lost its genial power,
And Abraham was old in vain:
Impossibilities are over,
If faith assent and God ordain.
He glorified Jehovah's name--
God spake the word, it must be done--
Father of nations he became,
And multitudes sprang forth from one.
From one old man the race did rise,
A barren womb the myriads bore,
Countless as stars that deck the skies,
As sands that crown the ocean shore.

The worthies these of ancient days,
By faith they lived, in faith they died;
Not yet received the promised grace,
But darkly from afar descried.
Assured the savior should appear
And confident in Christ to come,
Him they embraced, though distant, near;
And languished for their heavenly home.
Pilgrims they here themselves confessed,
Who no abiding place must know,
Strangers on earth they could not rest,
Or find their happiness below.
Regardless of the things behind,
The earthly home from whence they came,
A better land they longed to find,
A promised heaven was all their aim.
Their faith the gracious Father sees,
And kindly for his children cares,
He condescends to call them his,
And suffers them to call him theirs.
For them his heaven he hath prepared,
His New Jerusalem above;
And love is there their great reward,
A whole eternity of love.

Abraham, when severely tried,
His faith by his obedience showed,
He with the harsh command complied,
And gave his Isaac back to God.
His son the father offered up,
Son of his age, his only son,
Object of all his joy and hope,
And less beloved than God alone.
His seed elect, his heir foretold,
Of whom the promised Christ should rise,
He could not from his God withhold
That best, that costliest sacrifice.
The father curbed his swelling grief,
'Twas God required, it must be done;
He staggered not through unbelief,
He bared his arm to slay his son.
He rested in Jehovah's power,
The word must stand which God hath said,
He knew the Almighty could restore,
Could raise his Isaac from the dead.
He knew in whom he had believed
And, trusting in omnipotence,
His son as from the dead received,
His steadfast faith received him thence.
O for a faith like his, that we
The bright example may pursue,
May gladly give up all to thee,
To whom our more than all is due!
Now, Lord, for thee our all we leave,
Our willing soul thy call obeys,
Pleasure and wealth and fame we give,
Freedom and life, to win thy grace.
Is there a thing than life more dear,
A thing from which we cannot part?
We can: we now rejoice to tear
The idol from our bleeding heart.
Jesus, accept our sacrifice,
All things for thee we count but loss;
Lo! at thy word our Isaac dies,
Dies on the altar of thy cross.
Now to thyself the victim take,
Nature's last agony is over,
Freely thine own we render back,
We grieve to part with all no more.
For what to thee, O Lord, we give,
A hundredfold we here obtain,
And soon with thee shall all receive,
And loss shall be eternal gain.

Isaac by faith declared his race
In Jacob and in Esau blessed,
The younger by peculiar grace
A nobler heritage possessed.
By faith expiring Jacob knew
Distinguished mercies to pronounce,
His hands found out the happy two
And blessed his favorite Joseph's sons.
He raised himself upon the bed,
Propped on a staff he owned his Lord,
The patriarch bowed his hoary head,
His body with his soul adored.
Joseph by faith the flight foretold
Of Israel's afflicted race;
God their harsh bondage should behold
And lead them to the promised place.
Thither he willed his bones to go
And take possession in their stead;
His bones the promised land shall show,
He claims his Canaan, though dead.

Moses by faith from death was saved,
While heedless of the tyrant's will,
His parents in their God believed,
And dared the lovely babe conceal.
By faith, when now to manhood grown,
A just contempt of earth he showed,
Refused a prince's name to own
And sought but to be great in God.
In vain its pomps ambition spreads,
Glory in vain displays her crown,
A brighter crown its luster sheds,
A purer flame his bosom warms.
Wisely he chose the better part.
Sufferings with God's elect to share,
To pleasures vain he steeled his heart,
No room for them when God is there.
Fleeting he deemed them all, and vain,
His heart on heavenly joys bestowed,
Partaker of his people's pain,
The afflicted people of his God.
Egypt unfolds her golden blaze,
Yet all for Christ he counts but loss;
A richer treasure he surveys,
His Lord's anticipated cross.
He triumphed in his glorious shame,
On pleasure, wealth, and fame looked down,
'Twas heaven at which his wishes aim,
Aspiring to a starry crown.
By faith he left the oppressive land
And scorned the petty rage of kings,
Supported by Jehovah's hand
And shadowed by Jehovah's wings.
His steady way he still pursued,
Nor hopes nor fears retard his pace,
The Invisible before him stood,
And faith unveiled the Savior's face.
By faith he slew the typic lamb
And kept the passover of God:
He knew from whence its virtue came,
The saving power of sprinkled blood.
With all the servants of the Lord,
He--while the firstborn victims died--
Dared the destroying angel's sword
And, armed with blood, its point defied!

While through the sea by faith they passed,
The sea retired at God's command,
The waves shrink back with trembling haste,
The waves a crystal barrier stand.
The Egyptians daring to pursue
With horror found a watery grave;
Too late their want of faith they knew,
And sunk beneath the overwhelming wave.

By faith, while Israel's host surrounds
Proud Jericho's devoted walls,
The ark stands still, the trumpet sounds,
The people shout, the city falls!
Rahab by faith deliverance found,
Nor perished with the accursed race;
The harlot for her faith renowned
Amongst the worthies takes her place.
Worthies who all recorded stand
And shine in everlasting lays;
And justly now might each demand
The tribute of distincter praise.
Gideon and Barak claim the song,
And David good, and Samuel wise,
And Jephthah bold, and Sampson strong,
And all the ancient prophets rise!
The battles of the Lord they fought
Through faith, and mighty states subdued,
And works of righteousness they wrought,
And proved the faithfulness of God.
They stopped the lions' mouths, the rage
Of fire they quenched, escaped the sword,
The weak grew strong and bold to engage
And chase the hosts that dared their Lord.
Women their quickened dead received,
Women the height of faith displayed,
With steadfast confidence believed,
Believed their children from the dead.

Others, as in a furnace tried,
With strength of passive grace endured,
Tortures and deaths, through faith defied,
Through faith resisted unto blood.
Earth they beheld with generous scorn,
On all its proffered goods looked down,
High on a fiery chariot borne,
They lost their life to keep their crown.
Secure a better life to find,
The path of varied death they trod,
Their souls triumphantly resigned,
And died into the arms of God.
The prelude of contempt they found,
A spectacle to fiends and men;
Cruelly mocked and scourged and bound
'Til death shut up the bloody scene.
Or stoned, they glorified their Lord,
Or joyed, asunder sawn, to expire,
Or rushed to meet the slaughtering sword,
Or triumphed in the torturing fire.

Naked or in rough goatskins clad,
In every place they long confessed
The God for whom over earth they strayed
Tormented, destitute, distressed.
Of whom the world unworthy was,
Whom only God their maker knew,
The world they punished with their loss,
The holy anchorites withdrew.
Lone unfrequented wilds they trod,
Over mountaintops the wanderers ran,
With milder beasts in dens abode,
And shunned the haunts of savage man.

Famed for their faith all these believed,
By justifying grace made whole;
Nor yet the promised grace received,
The Christ, the fullness in their soul.
A better gift he us provides,
On whom the gospel-times are come;
And lo! the Holy Ghost abides
In us, and makes our hearts his home.
We now our elder brethren meet,
Their faith and happiness improve,
And soon with them shall shine complete
In Christ, and perfected in love.

Currently Evangelical from the Beginning see related

"Behold, with the Father we speak, and in his presence we stand, being children of malice and grown strong in all righteousness and soberness.  For no longer shall the Law say, 'Do not commit adultery', to him who has no desire at all for another's wife; and, 'You shall not kill', to him who has put away from himself all anger and enmity; and 'You shall not covet your neighbor's field or ox or ass', to those who have no care at all for earthly things, but store up the heavenly fruits; nor, 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth', to him who counts no man as his enemy, but all men his neighbors, and therefore cannot stretch out his hand at all for vengeance.  It will not require tithes of him who consecrates all his possessions to God, leaving father and mother and all his kindred and following the word of God.  And there will be no command to remain idle for one day of rest, to him who perpetually keeps sabbath--that is to say, who in the temple of God (which is man's body) does service to God and in every hour works righteousness."

--Irenaeus of Lyons
(Proof of the Apostolic Preaching 96)

Gratia vobis et pax a Deo Patre et Domino nostro Iesu Christo.

How is everyone?  I've been doing quite well lately.  Finally took a bit of a vacation Saturday at Atlantic City, NJ.  Turns out that some procedures for the tour got switched around from last year.  See, up until last year, you'd pay $40 for the bus trip there and back, but upon arrival you'd go to the casino and they'd give you $30, with hopes that you'd play the games and lose your money back to them, as well as some more after getting hooked.  Now, they just give you a $30 coupon that can be inserted, only once, into a slot machine and cannot be redeemed for cash.  Completely contrary to the description given by the tour bus people.  So yeah, we kinda got shafted there.  After standing in an endless line to get the coupons and then blowing everything on the slot machine, we finally grabbed some lunch and hit the beach.  I need to hit the beach more often; it was great.  Got some reading done, enjoyed the waves, got a bit of a tan...  Good times.

Reading:

Since my last post, here are the books I've finished reading:

• The Rapture Question by John Walvoord
• The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine, ed. Colin Gunton
  • Some of the chapters near the end were better than the ones at the beginning.  Thankfully.
• Mormon Doctrine by Bruce McConkie
  • It's done!  It's finally done!
• The Evangelical Essential: What Must I Do to Be Saved? by Philip Janowsky
  • A defense of the standard Lutheran version of justification by faith.  Janowsky essentially contended that nothing that Jesus taught matters because it pertains to the era of the Law, not of the Gospel, and so Paul must be given precedence over Christ in this respect.  (I think that would've taken Paul by quite a bit of surprise...)  Ultimately, Janowsky and his opponents both make the mistake of, in effect, pitting Jesus against Paul in terms of what one must do to be saved, rather than find a more holistic picture.  Better luck next time, Janowsky.
• Reasoning from the Scriptures by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society
  • It took a while, but I finally finished this book, which is a guide for Jehovah's Witnesses in meeting objections and questions.  The section on the Trinity was especially horrendous.  For the most part, the book consists of quotations from Scripture with minimal explanatory framework, and most of what is offered, is bad.  Some of the arguments are horrid, while others are often quite sound because the opinion being opposed is ludicrous.  Perhaps someday I wouldn't mind writing a book-length response to Reasoning from the Scriptures...

Current reads:

• The Holy Qur'an: Text, Translation, and Commentary, trans. Abdullah Yusuf Ali
• Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Vol. 2), ed. James Charlesworth
• Christian Education: Its History and Philosophy by Kenneth Gangel and Warren Benson
  • This is a really interesting book.  It does a great job of reviewing, not just the history of Christian educational theory per se, but indeed sketches a sort of outline of Christian thought on a lot of things.  I especially enjoyed the section dealing with Alcuin of York.
• Evangelical from the Beginning: A History of the Evangelical Congregational Church, ed. Terry Heisey
  • This is the most recent book on the history of my denomination, the Evangelical Congregational Church.  The editor, Dr. Terry Heisey, is my best friend Daniel's uncle.  Heisey wrote pretty much all of it, being one of the few people on the committee who really did anything.  It begins with roots in the Reformation and then in Wesleyan thought before moving on to Jacob Albright, the founder of the Evangelical Association.  He had been ordained as a Methodist minister after conversion, but had to set out on his own to preach in German to German-speakers.  The Evangelical Association grew and, in 1894, experienced a split that resulted in a distinct United Evangelical Church.  In 1922, the United Evangelical Church opted to merge back into the Evangelical Association as the Evangelical Church (which later merged with the United Brethren in Christ to become the Evangelical United Brethren Church, and then with the American Methodist Church to become the United Methodist Church), but because of the underhanded tactics used to force the merger, many dissenting churches--including the bulk of the East Pennsylvania Conference, held fast to their refusal to merge and became the Evangelical Congregational Church.  It's a very interesting book, and I especially enjoyed the anecdote about Bishop Heil, who was unable to attend a conference... because he'd been hit by a train.  And lived to tell the tale.  How does a man get hit by a train, for crying out loud?
• Live with Jehovah's Day in Mind by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society
  • Haven't gotten very far in it yet.  It's a treatment of the twelve "Minor Prophets", though not in the same commentary form as, e.g., Pay Attention to Daniel's Prophecy! or Revelation--Its Grand Climax is at Hand! or Isaiah's Prophecy: Light for All Mankind.  Nothing really objectionable just yet.
• Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality by Donald Miller
  • So far, not so bad, despite the title, which continues to reinforce the elevation of "spirituality" over "religion", where the latter is caricatured (as is so lamentably common) as a ritual-based system of purely human origin that neglects any relational aspect to the divine, and is rooted in a purely mechanistic view of God (put coin in, candy comes out).

Some Reflections on Evangelical-LDS Dialogue:

I recently started a thread at TheologyWeb to put forth some reflections of mine regarding theological dialogue between evangelical Christians and Latter-day Saints ("Mormons"), and I'm reposting the contents of my initial post here:

I've been thinking a lot about this topic over the past few weeks, especially while reading through various threads here, and I wanted to jot some thoughts down into writing.  Forgive the lack of much coherent organization throughout the post, as I have little intention of stringing particular reflections together in any sort of comprehensive whole.  Then I figured, why not do it here?  Apologies if I misrepresent anything from either side--call me out on it, please.

The first thought on my mind is something that I definitely see as a problem in evangelical 'countercult' ministries today: a deeply entrenched tendency to avoid interaction with real LDS apologetics at times, and also a heavy reliance on statements by LDS prophets (I use this term here as a reference for all presidents of the LDS Church, past and present).  With that said, I think one can draft a sort of taxonomy here:

• Category 1: Canon.  This includes, on the LDS side, the material in the Bible--at least as understood by Latter-day Saints--the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price, and D&C.  This, clearly, has the highest authority.
• Category 2: Leadership.  In other words, the statements and writings of influential past leaders.  The LDS side of this includes perhaps a privileged subsection--let's refer to the statements of the prophets themselves as (2.1), so that (2.2) can include, e.g., the contents of books like Mormon Doctrine, since Bruce McConkie never served at a level above that of Apostle.  We might make a further distinction within (2.1), such that (2.1.1) refers to those statements by prophets that are regarded, either by the prophets themselves or by the Church as a whole, as being specially inspired.
• Category 3: Apologists and Scholars.  This is, by its very nature, a rather diverse category, and so has to be treated as such.  It consists of the statements, writings, arguments, and perspectives of various LDS intellectuals--B. H. Roberts, Sterling McMurrin, Hugh Nibley, Stephen Robinson, the FARMS folk, Blake Ostler, etc., etc. (and, on the lesser end, folks like Jeff Lindsay).
• Category 4: Laymen and Laywomen.  The views of the rank-and-file faithful.

These categories obviously have some overlap in the content of what they espouse--for example, some form of theism must obviously be common to (LDS1)-(LDS4)--but there can also be drastic differences.  While (LDS2) may imply a broad geography for events described in the Book of Mormon, a limited geography is the more common postulate of (LDS3).  What may be commonplace in certain subsets of (LDS2) may be utterly foreign to (LDS4), and vice versa.

A similar taxonomy can be applied to the other side as well.  For evangelicals, we might suggest that (evangelical1) includes the Bible and only the Bible; (evangelical2) includes, among others, the Church Fathers, Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Wesley, etc., etc.--your mileage may vary depending on your particular theological tradition, and to that extent, so will the weighting of particular thinkers in terms of importance.  We might select a subset here, (evangelical2.1) as with the others, for materials such as the Apostles' Creed, the Niceno-Constantipolitan Creed, the Definition of Chalcedon, the Quicumque vult (= Athanasian Creed), and so forth.  (evangelical3) and (evangelical4) have rather obvious parallels in (LDS3) and (LDS4) respectively, without a doubt.  And, just as above, these categories have significant overlaps--again, consider theism as one common denominator in (evangelical1)-(evangelical4)--as well as divergences.  The theology of an evangelical layman (or laywoman) may have little in common with that of Athanasius, Martin Luther, or John Wesley, for example.

One problem that I see with a lot of 'countercult' materials--and others have said this very forcefully before me--is that there is an almost meticulous avoidance of in-depth interaction with (LDS3).  The typical pattern is to mine (LDS2) for data, give it the authority of (LDS1), and portray it as though it were (LDS4).  This has got to stop.  As someone said, it's time to compare our best with your best, and that largely amounts to pitting (evangelical3) against (LDS3).  I think I once ran across a defense of this practice on the part of many 'countercult' ministries to the effect that their goal is to reach the average Latter-day Saint, and so their focus is on (LDS4), not (LDS3).  Focusing on (LDS3) would not be as evangelistically useful, or so the argument goes.  (Can't find that article now, but if I do, I'll let you know.)  Personally I find this somewhat problematic.  First of all, as said above, in practice (LDS4) is virtually disregarded in favor of (LDS2); and second, why not try treatments of (LDS1)-(LDS4) together?  Why not do it all?  Yes, it's certainly more challenging, but let's not wimp out here.  (LDS3) is being sorely neglected, and that's simply intolerable.  (After all, atheists routinely ignore (evangelical3) in their critiques of Christianity, often dismissing it as mere hand-waving without any sort of effort to engage it.  The result, quite naturally, is an abysmal mess of ARG--"already refuted garbage".  How can we be so smugly confident that a similar practice of ignoring (LDS3) won't result in the same?  Maybe it would, or maybe the situation is different in some relevant way--but the best course of action seems to be to seriously engage (LDS3) so as to remove all doubt.)

I think that one frequent stumbling block in dialogue enters because of the LDS Church's claim to prophetic and apostolic leadership.  Evangelicals frequently expect that (LDS2.1.1), and to some extent (LDS2.1) as a whole, will be held to have higher authority than Latter-day Saints generally do.  I think the undergirding assumption here is that, even when a prophet is not directly delivering an inspired message, they will generally teach accurate theology--in other words, a low margin of error, however we might happen to set the bar for "low".  Moreover, there is also the general belief among evangelicals that being a prophet and being a heretic are generally mutually exclusive, and so when we note statements in (LDS2.1), we naturally assume that they will be within the bounds of LDS orthodoxy.  (It is a fairly simple leap from there to assuming that those statements will be anywhere close to mainstream within LDS orthodoxy, but this is a leap we make all-too-readily in many cases where we probably shouldn't.  Please keep us accountable on this point.)  There's the further matter of some confusion between what needs to be classified in (LDS2.1.1) vs. (LDS2.1.2) with regards to Brigham Young's discourses--one particular infamous statement of his has often been taken by evangelicals to mean that his discourses must all be classified, not only as (LDS2.1.1), but that this subsection of (LDS2.1.1) should be placed on par with (LDS1) in terms of inspiration and authority.  Maybe we're right in understanding him that way, maybe not.  I'm just saying that it's what often happens, and if Latter-day Saints disagree, then please help us to understand why.

Another thought: in discussions of the Trinity--and I hope that Nick's thread will be of some help in clearing this up--one common problem is that many Latter-day Saints often ask whether, in evangelical thought (which is, at its core and at its best, thoroughly and unequivocally Trinitarian), Jesus and the Father are "separate and distinct".  The problem with this is that, while those terms are similar and often taken to be synonymous, many evangelicals consider them to have different connotations.  "Separate" seems to imply a degree of separability and independence that, for evangelicals, we cannot in good faith affirm; and so some of us wary of this apparent implication, eschew the word "separate" in favor of "distinct".  We want to affirm "distinct" very strongly so that no one will mistake us for modalists, but we do not want to affirm "separate" because we want to maintain our emphasis on the unity of Father and Son.  So the routine coupling of "separate and distinct" puts us in quite a bind, because no simple answer can be given without extreme risk of misunderstanding.  LDS folks, please understand that some of us really do use those terms differently, and so I ask for some more care when phrasing questions or considering our position.

Another issue that I've seen is a persistent use of a "literal"/"figurative" dichotomy.  LDS ask evangelicals whether Jesus and the Father are "literally" one or "figuratively" one, and whether Jesus is "literally" the Father's Son or "figuratively" the Father's Son.  And sometimes, maybe LDS get frustrated with the outcome of these questions.  But the problem lies in the phrasing of the questions themselves.  I can perhaps speak only for myself, but I don't know if these questions make any more sense than asking whether something is literally or figuratively red.  Rather, to take it one at a time, there is a different spectrum to be used.  Let's suggest that for "oneness", the distinction is not literal vs. non-literal, but strict vs. loose senses of "oneness", which admits of a broader range than two options.  The strictest sense of "one", I might imagine, is the solitary unity of absolute identification: Father = Son in terms of absolute identity.  This would have to be some ridiculously intense form of modalism.  So, too, with slightly looser modalist usage: the Father and Son being one person, but distinguishable as modes of being.  Another type of modalism, with the 'Father' being the divine nature of Christ and the 'Son' being the human nature of Christ, seems to be looser still--as well as rather strange, but that's beside the point here.  Further out on the spectrum is the Trinitarian understanding--one being, but distinct persons.  Still further out is another position, perhaps: the Father and Son are two beings of the same rare kind-essence.  This can be tightened by emphasizing (complete) unity of purpose; a bare unity of purpose, without reference to essence at all, would be still further out, and I'm not sure whether there's anything beyond it.  The third position from the loosest end of the spectrum--that of unity of purpose and the same kind-essence--appears to be, with suitable adjustments for the LDS stance that humans, angels, and Gods are of a common kind-essence (as I understand it), an appropriate way of summarizing the (or merely "an"?) LDS view of the matter.  So here we can see how to chart evangelical and LDS views of "oneness", without any reference to metaphor, literalness, figures of speech, etc.  And maybe it's just me, but while this seems more complex and nuanced, it also seems to be a lot clearer and more conducive to substantive discussion.

Turning to the issue of the Sonship of the Son, again I have to say that I don't think the matter of "literalness" is all that helpful.  For example, I know what biological sonship is; I know what creative sonship is; I know what sonship by adoption is; and I have a sense for what (many) evangelicals believe about the eternal generation of the Son--a relation of hypostatic origin that constitutes an eternal filial relationship between two and only two persons (Begetter and Begotten) of the same kind-essence (and perhaps even the same individual-essence?), and so a relation deemed analogous in spirit if not in detail to biological sonship.  Some evangelicals might even say that biological generation (as in humans in particular) is analogous to the eternal generation because it is patterned after the eternal generation, with suitable modification for temporality and the involvement of sexual reproductions.  (Note that we have now developed technology that allows for sexual reproduction without sexual intercourse, but that it is nonetheless sexual reproduction.  Note also that I'm not really sure why I'm noting this.)  But I don't know that I'd call any of these four more "literal" than the others, which is why I personally have trouble interpreting LDS references to the "literalness" of the Sonship of Christ.  Many evangelicals understand this to mean biological sonship in both pre-mortality and mortality (see both side-notes below), and so infer the involvement of sexual intercourse in both cases.  I've often seen LDS object to this inference, but without much clarity on what "literalness" means.  Perhaps this is one area where we can further discussion by abandoning the "literal"/"figurative" divide, although this diverges from established LDS usage.

(As a side note, it is also my understanding that both physical birth in mortality and "spirit-birth" in mainstream LDS thought are subsumed under the category of, more or less, "biological generation", though I am open to correction if this is wrong.  I say "mainstream LDS thought" because I know that some LDS thinkers reject the idea of "spirit-birth" and instead contend that the relationship between our spirits and the Father in pre-mortality is perhaps one of adoption.  This is an appropriate place to note that the passages in the Bible interpreted in LDS circles as indicative of "spirit-birth" or "spirit-adoption" are often understood by evangelicals to be examples of creative sonship--as with the angels as "sons of Elohim", Malachi's reference of "one Father" (though this may have shades of the corporate adoption of Israel), and talk of God as "Father of spirits" in Hebrews.)

(As a second side note, I think I've seen LDS occasionally believe that evangelicals believe that the Son was begotten by the Holy Spirit on Mary.  Allow me to take this moment to say that I know of no evangelical thinker who affirms that the Holy Spirit is the father of Jesus.  Rather, when evangelicals speak of the begetting of Christ by the Father, we mean something that happened in eternity and had no reference to Mary; Christ's birth from Mary involved the Holy Spirit as an active participant, but the Holy Spirit was not an active participant in the eternal generation of the Son--and this holds for both sides of the debate about the filioque clause, except for certain ecumenical theologians who'd like to even things out by saying that the Son is begotten ex patre spirituque, which is obviously wrong.  As I understand it, in LDS thought the reason the Son is "only-begotten" is that this has reference to birth in mortality, and as such, the Son would not have been "only-begotten" prior to conception in Mary's womb.  But for evangelicals, the Son is eternally the "only-begotten" of the Father, which has nothing to do with human birth later on.)

Just a couple more reflections now.  (Rejoice, for this post neareth its end!)  I remember a thread in which the complaint was made that LDS missionaries seem unable to ably defend their beliefs.  The fact of the matter is that this is commonplace among both lay Latter-day Saints and lay evangelicals, and even among evangelical clergy.  Neither side gets off scot-free here, and we could both afford to do a whole heckuva lot better at training our folks to defend their beliefs, answer questions, and understand the other position(s).  However, it also seems that some form of fideism is more prominent in LDS circles than in evangelical circles.  That's not to say that it's necessarily more common, but that it's endorsed more regularly, even encouraged and commended.  Often this seems to tie in to a reliance on religious experience for generating testimonies.  Now, again, evangelicals do this too.  A lot.  (And as a personal note, it bugs the heck outta me.)  In my opinion, there's nothing inherently wrong with religious experience, or even its pivotal role in confirming religious beliefs, or even (perhaps) a role in creating certain beliefs.  However, that said, here's the crucial caveat: there are unequivocal experiences, and there are equivocal experiences.  The latter can be readily interpreted as more than one kind of phenomenon.  (One could argue that virtually all experience is technically the latter, since any sensory experience could be interpreted as veridical or as deception by a Cartesian demon, but that's why I said "readily", as the former is almost universally held to be vastly more probable than the latter.)  For the latter kind of religious experiences, we have to submit it to Scripture and allow any experience-derived religious beliefs to be contested by argument.  If the arguments lean sufficiently against those beliefs, then it may be time to reinterpret the confirming (or founding) experience.  This is something that I often don't see Latter-day Saints expressing a willingness to do (and the same is quite true for many evangelicals, I'll add).  Whenever a critic points out that one can have a "testimony" for, e.g., Islam that is apparently indistiguishable from that for Mormonism, the underlying point being made is, I think, precisely that experience (and/or its apparent implications) must be subject to reinterpretation and re-evaluation when the situation calls for it, because such experience is insufficient, in and of itself, to be a guarantor of truth.  (If it were a guarantor of truth, after all, then both Islam and Mormonism would be rendered true by their respective experiential bases, and unless we want to adopt a patently insufficient notion of truth, that just doesn't work.)

Finally, there's the matter of forthrightness.  This has also been a matter of discussion and perhaps contention between evangelicals and Latter-day Saints, at least here at TheologyWeb.  One criticism of LDS practice is that there is an unwillingness to be fully forthright with what they believe, whereas this is sometimes defended with an appeal to the milk vs. meat distinction in Hebrews, and other assorted texts.  I'm not going to get into the details of interpreting and applying that passage, except to say that I doubt very much that, if someone were to have asked the author a question about some theological point, I think the answer would have been more helpful than, "You're not ready to learn that yet.  But here are some answers to questions you didn't ask but I think you probably should have."  I'm leaning more towards thinking that the author would've actually answered the question, even if the answer were tailored to the level of the questioner and even if some extra background teaching were required.  Now, I should also note that some evangelicals have forthrightness problems as well, but the fact remains that there are certainly evangelicals who are willing to take a stab at any question regarding evangelical belief, at least so long as it's an honest question (and also frequently when we know it isn't).  There are also Latter-day Saints who would do the same, mutatis mutandis.  Both sides need to work on being more honest and forthright.  I hope that we can all agree on that. 

I think I've rambled long enough now, and so I'd really like to hear some further reflections on both sides of the aisle.  I'm not looking for this to turn into another bitter debate thread, so please try to keep it constructive for a change.  I'm certainly not looking for a repeat of the atrocity that was perpetrated on the "3 Things You Like about Mormonism?" thread.  But I'm confident that if we try, we can avoid letting yet another thread degenerate into debate about now this topic, now that one, etc., etc.

Miscellaneous:

So the past week or so has seen quite a few celebrity deaths.  I'd figured we'd met our quota, but they just kept happening.  Ed McMahon.  Farrah Fawcett.  Michael Jackson.  And then Billy Mays, which probably hit me harder than the first three combined.  In light of the last one, it's only fitting that I should link to this.

I did more work at the church library last week (catalogued 191 more books), and I plan to return on Tuesday to press onward with the miscellaneous stacks and maybe get a start on the fiction shelves.  While working there, we came across some material that belongs in the church archives rather than the library.  Copies of old special bulletins (such as the dedication service of the sanctuary) and conference reports, mostly, plus the church discipline and other materials.

Since I quoted such a large block of text, and since I'm trying to cut down on the length of my blog posts, I'll end here for now.

Gratia vobis.

Currently Mormon Doctrine By Bruce R. McConkie see related

"Unless a Christian has performed good works, he cannot prove his faith at all, and since he cannot prove that it exists, it must be considered as altogether non-existent."

--Salvian
(On the Government of God 4.2)

Gratia vobis et pax a Deo Patre et Domino nostro Iesu Christo.

Greetings to all.  I've been doing relatively well lately.  No real issues like I mentioned before, thankfully.  My girlfriend's been keeping me company for over a week now, and she'll be here through Sunday night.  I'm looking forward to a trip to the beach on Saturday--haven't been there in years!

Oh, and since no one has yet, please feel free to check out my last post and offer some feedback on those legal scenarios and other questions?

Reading:

I realized recently that I omitted two books from the list in my prior post: An Inconvenient Book by Glenn Beck and Armageddon, Oil, and the Middle East Crisis by John Walvoord.  Other books I've finished reading since my last post:

• Father, Son, and Spirit: The Trinity and John's Gospel by Andreas Köstenberger and Scott Swain
• Israel's 48 Signs of Christ's Return by Gordon Lindsay
• Evangelical Reunion: Denominations and the One Body of Christ by John Frame
• Understanding the Last Days: The Keys to Unlocking Bible Prophecy by Tim LaHaye
  • Hahahahaha.  That's all I really need to say here.
• A Common Calling: The Witness of Our Reformation Churches in North America Today, ed. Keith Nickle
  • A fairly brief report by some council for Lutheran-Reformed relations.  It was of limited interest to me, since I come from neither tradition, but it did make a decent follow-up to Frame's book.
• Are Miraculous Gifts for Today? (Counterpoints), ed. Wayne Grudem
  • Very interesting.  The charismatic side had a stronger case to make than I would've expected.  I'm still in the "open but cautious" camp, but I'll have to do some heavy contemplation at some point of the more charismatic end.
• The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God by Robert Wilken
  • I <3 this book.  (Yes, "<3".  Get over it.)  It's very well-written, and rather than being a comprehensive review of the church fathers, it's more topical, using particular fathers as examples, and the book has a sort of beauty about it.  I recommend it.
• The Church in Prophecy by John Walvoord
  • I borrowed this book from the church library yesterday after church.  We ran a few errands, and I managed to finish the book before I got home.  How is that just?

Other books:

• The Qur'an: Text, Translation, and Commentary, trans. Abdullah Yusuf Ali
• Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Vol. 2), ed. James Charlesworth
• Mormon Doctrine by Bruce McConkie
• Reasoning from the Scriptures by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society
• The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine, ed. Colin Gunton
  • Not what I thought it'd be, to be quite honest.  I'm not really that enthused about the contents just yet, but maybe the chapter on the Trinity will change my tune.
• The Rapture Question by John Walvoord
  • Smears amillennialism as spiritualizing what obviously should never be spiritualized--he never clarifies exactly what he means by "spiritualized", unfortunately, and seems to see no middle ground between that and full-on literalism (as understood, naturally, as his reading of the text).  Also has the typical dispensationalist problem with Israel and the church, and does not spend nearly enough time contemplating Romans 11.  Ultimately, preterist amillennialism is off the map as far as he's concerned, which is a shame, since he seems to at least want to deal with the full spectrum of opposing opinions.  Better luck next time, Dr. Walvoord.
• Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality by Donald Miller
  • I'm in a book discussion group on this, so I'll be pacing myself greatly--two chapters a week.  Had the first meeting last night, and it was actually quite enjoyable.

After that discussion group, I finally got a chance to check out my pastor's personal library, including his special case of old books (including one from the year 1809).  I must say, I'm quite drawn to his 1885 Emphatic Diaglott and his 1914 copy of the Photo-Drama of Creation.  And he's got plenty of great material in his home office as well, including the complete works of John Wesley, all of John Calvin's commentaries, and all of Cornelius Van Til's works (which, considering that he knew Van Til, makes sense).  Also some other cool stuff, like Yamauchi's book Pre-Christian Gnosticism.  I look forward to seeing that room again.  It makes me feel all good inside...

(My girlfriend, by the way, is currently reading: The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel; Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament by John Walton; The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity by Philip Jenkins; and Time and Eternity: Exploring God's Relationship to Time by William Lane Craig.)

More Fun with Jehovah's Witnesses:

It's been a while since I've reported any of this here, so I might as well get back in the habit of saying something now and then.  I stopped because the reports got dull--no controversy, not much to talk about.  But the past few times have been quite discussion based, and so I'm going to give you some modified forms of my records.

Let's rewind to 30 May.  That day, it was just me and 'Uriah'; 'Shem' couldn't make it, and I actually don't think I've seen him since.  After a little bit of smalltalk and petting my cat, we chatted a bit about some JW publications I'd like.  When we finally got to business, we worked through the first eleven paragraphs of Chapter 7 in What Does the Bible Really Teach?, which deals with having hope after a loved one has died.  Nothing was especially controversial here--he thoroughly enjoyed most of my answers--except for one paragraph (#11) which attempted to use the case of Lazarus to teach that consciousness ceases absolutely at death.  Since we already hashed through some of the afterlife questions in a previous session and will no doubt return to them after we get further along, I pointed past that disagreement to the point that the Bible focuses very little on the 'afterlife' and much more on resurrection.

I then managed to go on a rant about the Word of Faith movement for quite a while.  I think it started when I was talking about visions of heaven and hell in intertestamental Jewish literature, and somehow shifted into the 'visions' of Word of Faith teachers... and from there I ran through some of the more eccentric teachings of the movement, including many that Uriah had never heard.  So we spent some good time exploring the insanity of a third party.  He agrees that they're pretty far removed from reality.

Also, Uriah found out that there are two scheduled publication releases for the upcoming convention, and that they're supposed to be different from previous releases somehow.  At least, that's what he's heard. I'm looking forward to it.  According to Wikipedia, this year may see a release of a JW study companion to Acts of the Apostles. That'd be pretty interesting if so, and I wouldn't mind getting a copy.

Our next meeting took place a week later.  I had mistakenly thought that we were supposed to meet at 1:30, but it was 1:00, so J1 caught me by surprise while I was typing up this post at TheologyWeb.  We chatted for a little bit--he brought me a couple of pamphlet-style publications, as well as the latest Watchtower and Awake!.  (Regarding the back page of the latest Awake!, by the way, please watch this interesting YouTube video.)

It didn't take too long before we dove into the remainder of the chapter (paragraphs 12-25) from What Does the Bible Really Teach?.  The first portion of it, everything until paragraph 20, was thoroughly unobjectionable, in my view.  So we had no controversy until we reached that. Paragraph 20 asserts that some individuals will not be resurrected at all at the time of judgement:

Does this mean that ever human who ever lived will be resurrected?  No.  The Bible says that some of the dead are in "Gehenna." (Luke 12:5)  [...]  So Gehenna is a fitting symbol of everlasting destruction. Although Jesus will have a role in judging the living and the dead, Jehovah is the final Judge. (Acts 10:42)  He will never resurrect those whom he judges to be wicked and unwilling to change.

We'll get back to that after a while, but see this post I did a while back. The next couple of paragraphs (21-22) set forth the JW belief in a heavenly resurrection as spirit-beings for some, and the two paragraphs after that (23-24) dealt with the anointed.

During my brief rundown in delineating what paragraphs 21-22 were about, I explained a bit of my own view as well, and thoroughly managed to take Uriah by surprise.  He'd never met anyone who firmly believes in the resurrection of the body and the new heavens and new earth while also not believing in the resurrection of the anointed class to a heavenly existence.  He had so much stuff running through his head after that, that he kept stumbling over the words for the next few paragraphs, and at one point he just randomly stopped in mid-sentence to think for about a minute or so.  The perplexity was great and evident.

...Aaaaaanyway, once we got to discussion time, I started out with the issue of whether all people will be resurrected. So first Uriah explained the three-part division of righteous, unrighteous (both of these are resurrected), and blotted out (<Soup Nazi>"No resurrection for you!"</Soup Nazi>); I was surprised to hear Uriah state in his explanation that the third category wasn't really in the Bible.  So then we began discussing who might be in the third category, and Uriah stated that he really wasn't sure.  He thinks Adam is probable, and he leans towards putting Judas and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah there as well.  So then I asked him about Sodom and Gomorrah with reference to Matthew 11:24, and he thought for a moment and said he really didn't know, so he'd have to look it up.  More specifically, we established that he tentatively thinks that, when judgment day rolls around, both the people of Sodom and the unrepentant hearers of Jesus' condemnation will be non-existent, and so he isn't sure how it can be better for one non-existent group than for another non-existent group in a time when neither of them exists.  I also asked why Jesus spoke so universally of the resurrection in John 5:28, and he didn't really have an answer for that either.

I did get some clarification of some sort on one question I had regarding the anointed.  For JWs, or at least for Uriah, only the anointed are sealed with holy spirit, but all believers can receive holy spirit, be guided by holy spirit, even described as indwelt by holy spirit.  (I'll have to check my collection of JW literature to see if they contradict that.  So far that does seem to be fairly standard.) This took a tiny bit of sting out of an argument I constructed the night before, but not too much:

• (1) Everyone indwelt by the Spirit will have life given to their mortal bodies. [cf. Romans 8:11]
• (2) the anointed are indwelt by the Spirit [premise]
• (3) the anointed do not experience resurrection of their bodies [premise]
• ergo, one of (1)-(3) must be incorrect

He wasn't entirely sure what to do about this either, but he assured me that he'd look further into JW exegesis of Romans 8:11 for our next meeting.  Looking at verses 12 and 13 didn't help him evade the argument too much, unless he interprets "make YOUR mortal bodies alive" (Romans 8:11, NWT) as meaning something other than resurrection, which in light of the passage's explicit reference to raising Christ from the dead seems to be pretty cut and dry.

That's as far as we got on the sixth, and we met again on 20 June.  My girlfriend was there, of course, and during the hour before the meeting I scrambled around to do a bit of extra research to add to my notes (none of which I actually had to use this time).  It was the first time my girlfriend finally got to see me in action, I think. (She says it was "dreamy".)  The reason we skipped a week in there is that Uriah had to cancel because a Bethel speaker was coming to the Kingdom Hall.  I couldn't make it to that, unfortunately.

The first thing we did was a bit of small talk, and after I mentioned that my mother and her friend Adrian from North Ireland were in New York City that day, Uriah mentioned the one time when he was eight years old and in the scouts, and in New York City their leader accidentally took a wrong turn and led their troop into a topless bar.  I imagine that required quite a bit of explaining to parents.  I mentioned how a couple times when I was in NYC, I often walked past Bethel, and he said that he thinks they might eventually move increasingly out of the city to places like Patterson and some other town.

We then got to talking about the convention, which will be from the last day in July to the first two days in August, and he'll be glad to give me a ride if I don't mind being there an hour or so after it ends each day--which is fine with me, because come on, where better for me to hang out than after hours at a JW convention?  Also, we both agree that it'd be sweet if one of the book releases were indeed a commentary on Acts.

Next Uriah mentioned his research into the Sodom and Gomorrah bit, and his conclusion was that some people from Sodom and Gomorrah will be resurrected, but most will not.  He gave me an article from the 15 August 1982 Watchtower, so I'll have to read through it, look up some of the conflicting opinions, and ask him to look into them.

We then got to Romans 8:11 and had some fun discussion in circles (which was a pattern that was to mark the remainder of the day).  I got him to agree that "make YOUR mortal bodies alive" (Romans 8:11, NWT) has reference to the resurrection, and he agrees that Paul is addressing the anointed.  Uriah pointed me to Ephesians 2:4-6, and I then explained how resurrection was historically used both literally and metaphorically--in the Old Testament as a metaphor for Israel's return from exile, and in the New Testament as a metaphor for the current transformation in life that takes place upon acceptance of Christ.  I pointed out that Paul talks here in the past tense about our being raised up, which clearly must be metaphorical, and he agreed; so then we returned to Romans 8:11, which I pointed out appears to refer to literal resurrection, not metaphorical.  Ultimately, Uriah isn't sure why Paul said "mortal bodies" instead of "mortal lives".

Uriah then asked me to turn to 1 Corinthians 15, esp vv. 35-40, 50-53. (We oddly had no discussion of the "flesh and blood" thing, which is surprising considering how prominent that argument is in JW literature.)  So first he asked me my opinion about corruptibility, which he interestingly identifies with physicality--not a mere association, but actually identification.  (Note to self: Ask Uriah whether Satan is incorruptible.)  We got into a discussion of everlasting life and immortality, and here I sort of fumbled; I opted to defer the question of whether the sinless angels have immortality, and I'll have to look more into that.

[Perhaps I'll find some help here in Summa Theologica I, Q50, art. 5, wherein Thomas Aquinas considers whether or not the angels are incorruptible?  His conclusion is yes.*  (Oh, and I just found a typo in my copy of the Summa...  the heading for I, Q53, art. 3 asks about an "angle" where it should be "angel"....  The very fact that I noticed this at all concerns me.)  I perhaps ought to also reference I, Q75, art. 6--which deals with the incorruptibility of the human soul.]

We returned to 1 Corinthians 15:53, a verse that was to dominate our discussion for quite a while.  I asked him what he thinks "this which is corruptible" means, and he answered the physical body; I asked him what "incorruption" is, and he answered that it's a state of existence as a spirit-being; and I asked him what putting on was, and he pointed me to Paul's description of spiritual armor.  So then I asked whether this verse was about literal resurrection, and he said yes.  I then asked what it means for the physical body to put on a state of existence as a spirit-being, and here we went for a loooong spirally ride.  He kept wanting to explain the passage in terms of 'putting on' God's principles of right living; I pointed out that this would be an apt description of conversion or sanctification, but not of resurrection.  He said at several points that a physical body actually cannot put on incorruption, and when asked about the verse in question, where Paul says flatly the opposite, he continually attempted to default to the godly principles explanation, which finally culminated in a statement that the physical body (that is, the person as a physical body) must accept godly principles so that one day the person--not the body itself--can be renewed in the resurrection by putting on incorruption.  (But, it will be noted, in this explanation the physical body never itself puts on incorruption, contra Paul--and I will return to this with Uriah sometime in the future to hammer this point home more.)

We then discussed some earlier verses (vv. 43ff.-ish), and Uriah attempted to point me to the metaphor of sowing and reaping.  I quickly asked him what "it" is, and he considered for a moment and said the body--specifically, the physical body.  So then I read through verse 43 with substitution of "physical body" for "it", and he said that it wasn't the body, it was the "life-force".  I then asked if the sowing was burial, and he said yes.  I pointed out that we bury bodies, not life-forces; and I believe somewhere in here he attempted to say that "it" changes referent within the verse, which clearly doesn't work.  I may be imagining that, though.  At any rate, he sorta gave up on this one and then asked me some questions about physical resurrection, like how God can raise up the same body after thousands of years.  Thankfully I'd recently glanced at a work used the analogy of iron filings hidden in sand and drawn out by a powerful magnet, so I used that analogy to explain it.  I couldn't recall at the time what it was, but I now realize that it was a passage from Abdisho bar Brika's Marganitha 5.7:

But, now, should any doubtingly inquire how bodies can rise again which have been destroyed, and which have mingled with the dust, which have been eaten of wild beasts, or consumed by fire, or drowned in water? we reply : Should a piece of iron be broken into impalpable powder, and be mixed with dust and sand, the hidden power of a magnet will at once separate the atoms from the dust and sand, and from whatever other heterogeneous bodies with which they may have been mixed; and if such virtue resides in the magnet, how much more possible is it for the power of the Creator, in His wisdom, to separate, bring together, and remodel the bodies of men at the resurrection!

The conversation never really got controversial again from there.  I think I may have thrown some serious wrenches in his exegesis, but I'm not really sure whether he realizes it or not.  So we agreed that on 11 July we'd get into Christ's resurrection and the issue of the anointed and unanointed, and eventually I'd like to start circling back to some of these topics and pick up some pieces.  Should be interesting.

(Also, please pray for my mother, who was recently diagnosed with degenerative joint disease and a herniated disc.  And while you're at it, since the first one is probably hereditary and I already have joint problems, feel free to pray for me as well.)

Gratia vobis.

Here is the text of Summa Theologica I, Q50, art. 5 (with the citations updated into my preferred format):

Whether the angels are incorruptible?

Objection 1:  It would seem that the angels are not incorruptible; for Damascene, speaking of the angel, says (De fide orthodoxe 2.3) that he is "an intellectual substance, partaking of immortality by favor, and not by nature."

Objection 2:  Further, Plato says in the Timaeus (§9): "O gods of gods, whose maker and father am I: You are indeed my works, dissoluble by nature, yet indissoluble because I so will it."  But gods such as these can only be understood to be the angels.  Therefore the angels are corruptible by their nature.

Objection 3:  Further, according to Gregory (Moralia 16.45), "all things would tend towards nothing, unless the hand of the Almighty preserved them."  But what can be brought to nothing is corruptible.  Therefore, since the angels were made by God, it would appear that they are corruptible of their own nature.

On the contrary, Dionysius says (Divine Names 4) that the intellectual substances "have unfailing life, being free from all corruption, death, matter, and generation."

I answer that it must necessarily be maintained that the angels are incorruptible of their own nature.  The reason for this is, that nothing is corrupted except by its form being separated from the matter.  Hence, since an angel is a subsisting form, as is clear from what was said above (I, Q50, art. 2), it is impossible for its substance to be corruptible.  For what belongs to anything considered in itself can never be separated from it; but what belongs to a thing, considered in relation to something else, can be separated, when that something else is taken away, in view of which it belonged to it.  Roundness can never be taken from the circle, because it belongs to it of itself; but a bronze circle can lose roundness, if the bronze be deprived of its circular shape.  Now to be belongs to a form considered in itself; for everything is an actual being according to its form: whereas matter is an actual being by the form.   Consequently a subject composed of matter and form ceases to be actually when the form is separated from the matter.  But if the form subsists in its own being, as happens in the angels, as was said above (I, Q50, art. 2), it cannot lose its being.  Therefore, the angel's immateriality is the cause of why it is incorruptible by its own nature.

A token of this incorruptibility can be gathered from its intellectual operation; for since everything acts according as it is actual, the operation of a thing indicates its mode of being.  Now the species and nature of the operation is understood from the object.  But an intelligible object, being above time, is everlasting.  Hence every intellectual substance is incorruptible of its own nature.

Reply to Objection 1:  Damascene is dealing with perfect immortality, which includes complete immutability; since "every change is a kind of death," as Augustine says (Contra Maximinium 3).  The angels achieve perfect immutability only by favor, as will appear later (I, Q62).

Reply to Objection 2:  By the expression 'gods' Plato understands the heavenly bodies, which he supposed to be made up of elements, and therefore dissoluble of their own nature; yet they are forever preserved in existence by the divine will.

Reply to Objection 3:  As was observed above (I, Q44, art. 1) there is a kind of necessary thing which has a cause of its necessity.  Hence it is not repugnant to a necessary or incorruptible being to depend for its existence on another as its cause.  Therefore, when it is said that all things, even the angels, would lapse into nothing, unless preserved by God, it is not to be gathered therefrom that there is any principle of corruption in the angels; but that the nature of the angels is dependent on God as its cause.  For a thing is said to be corruptible not merely because God can reduce it to non-existence, by withdrawing his act of preservation, but also because it has some principle of corruption within itself, or some contrareity, or at least the potentiality of matter.

Currently Father, Son and Spirit: The Trinity and John's Gospel (New Studies in Biblical Theology) By Andreas J. Kostenberger, Scott R. Swain see related

"Because the Gentiles had previously taught the doctrine of the plurality of gods, who were numerous and different in youth and old age, in weakness and strength, so that some of them were able to do this and some others that—Christ ordered His disciples against this to teach all the nations to turn from all the error of paganism, and to believe in the unity of nature in the Godhead, as was the case with the doctrine first taught to mankind, from which the knowledge of religion was received; and also to learn that the one who is from eternity and is the cause of everything is one Divine nature known in the three persons of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."

--Theodore of Mopseuestia
(Commentary on the Nicene Creed, chap. II, par. 4)

Gratia vobis et pax a Deo Patre et Domino nostro Iesu Christo.

Hello again, all.  I've been off my painkillers for quite a while, and it seems I've made a fine recovery.  Did go through another of my depressive phases, and that was pretty bad, but it lasted less than two full days of absolute, unmitigated misery... and now I'm fine, so far as I can tell.  The next few weeks should be quite interesting.  My mother's boyfriend friend Adrian is staying with us until the beginning of July, and my girlfriend will be staying here for two weeks starting tomorrow.  I'm looking forward to it greatly, as always.  Adrian hails from North Ireland and is beginning to adjust to America, and particularly the land of the Pennsylvania Dutch.  Last night he thought he was going insane, because he'd evidently never seen fireflies (or as we call them, lightning bugs) before, and so seeing a smattering a little blinking, flying lights in the yard... well, he questioned his grip on reality for a time.  This morning we went to breakfast (he learned what "jelly" and "pancakes" are, as well as syrup), and fortunately as we were leaving, we found a lightning bug on the door to examine.  (He immediately began speculating on what would happen if he could capture a whole bunch of fireflies, bring them back home, and let them loose in his friend's garden after the friend had downed a pint or two...  I like this guy.)  This should prove to be a fascinating month.

Reading:

I've gotten quite a bit of reading finished since the last time I posted.  Here are the things I've managed to complete:

• American Islam: Growing Up Muslim in America by Richard Wormser
  • Far less informative than I'd hoped.  Having gone through it, I really don't see any reason why anyone would choose to read this.  There are far better books out there on Islam, probably far better books on Islam in America, and no doubt even better books dealing with Muslim teenagers in America.
• Christianity in Crisis by Hank Hanegraaff
  • Like I said before, this book was very informative with respect to the doctrinal poisons of the Word of Faith movement.  Remind me to cite some of the more peculiar teachings analyzed here.
• Re-entry: Striking Parallels Between Today's News Events and Christ's Second Coming by John Wesley White
  • Supposed to be eschatological, but turned out to be just a very pessimistic review of then-contemporary society.  It was written in 1970, so.... yeah, kinda missed the mark on the predictive aspects, and the rest was just dull and frequently consisted of unsourced quotes.  Why is that so prevalent in popular Christian literature (esp. that from the futurist eschatological perspective)?
• On the Free Choice of the Will by St. Augustine
  • A lot better than I expected.  This has renewed a fair deal of my respect for Augustine.  He actually quite adamantly defends a fairly robust notion of free will, although he tries to play things a bit differently in his Retractiones, the relevant portion of which was included with my edition.
• Perspectives on an Evolving Creation, edited by Keith Miller
  • Overall, a great book.  However, the last chapter absolutely sucked.  Badly.  It attempted to introduce and defend physicalism as a superior Christian anthropology, but failed to even attempt to address the issues that substance dualists might have with that model, particularly respecting mental activity and causation; and a lot of the time, it just didn't explain what was going on.  Perhaps I'll have a slightly more favorable opinion of it after I read a better treatment of that position... but I somewhat doubt it.  Other than that, and my aforementioned complaints and gripes, I'm very glad I read this book.  (By the way, I plan on responding to the evolution comments on the last post when I get a chance.  It's going to take some thought, but more pertinently, I need to finish some of the citations and stuff.)
• Old Testament Exegesis: A Primer for Students and Pastors by Douglas Stuart
  • Not quite what I expected, but if I ever have an Old Testament exegesis class in seminary, I'll know what to expect and how to go about it, I suppose.
• Approaching Hoofbeats: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Billy Graham
  • Also not what I expected.  I was figuring on more of an eschatological focus, but Graham had more of a look at things like war, famine, etc., in today's world without much of a seeming desire to tie it into the 'end times', except for occasional vividly imaginative descriptions of what it might've been like for John to receive his vision.
• The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities by Darrell Bock
  • Great book.  Very capably refutes 'New School' contentions regarding the position of Gnosticism and traditional views as equally pedigreed descendants of original Christianity.  Could've done with less extensive quoting from the Gnostic documents, perhaps, but I understand and sympathize with what Bock was going for there.
• Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Vol. 1), edited by James Charlesworth
  • I can't believe I've finished this...  Remind me later to share more things I've learned from it.
• Exploring the Worship Spectrum: Six Views, edited by Paul Basden
  • Good book in the Counterpoints series.  The only 'style' mentioned that had no appeal was the chapter on "emerging worship", which reminds me of a bunch of kindergarteners with severe ADD turning church into a monstrous hybrid between 'arts and crafts time' and a RadioShack.  Also, the defender of 'contemporary worship' made some remarks about emotion being integral to worship, and the one who called him out on it was the charismatic, which I didn't exactly see coming.  But on the whole, everyone was very irenic and civil, and largely supported one another.
• On the Reliability of the Old Testament by Kenneth Kitchen
  • Excellent treatment.  I mean, really excellent.  I can wish that he'd dealt more with certain passages than he did, or that he would've spent less space analyzing the minute details of individual archaeological sites, but it was a solid tour-de-force in favor of the Old Testament as a substantially reliable historical record--and, I might add, he does not suffer fools gladly and has a lively sense of humor.  I went into this book considering the fifteenth century BC to be the most likely date for the Exodus, but after coming out of it, Kitchen has managed to sway me towards the thirteenth century BC, though not definitively so.  I'm impressed, though.
• Belief by Gianni Vattimo
  • This book was pretty bad, in my opinion.  I really wish I could be kinder to it, but that would involve lying.  This is not the "epoch of the end of metaphysics".  Metaphysics = good.  Professore Vattimo: you may be living in a peculiar world of your own construction, but others among us are quite aware that metaphysics as a discipline is more alive and well than you can possibly fathom.  (Of course, then again, we know that you don't exactly even read any analytic philosophy, but rather flip the page if you so much as see logical notation.)  And natural theology is not inherently "violent", because (1) that makes no sense whatsoever, (2) your definition of violence is not the only philosophically viable one, and I don't think that yours is really all that tenable at all, and (3) you repeatedly caricature virtually everyone with whom you disagree.  So Jesus did not come to abolish the nexus between violence and the sacred--your exegesis is atrocious, by the way.  And thus secularization--and you have a rather poor definition for this as well, I might add--is not the natural heir of the Christian message; the Christian message needs no heir, because the Christianity of the creeds is still quite alive and well.  (And I'm still not sure what on earth you mean by "weak ontology", because you seem to share with Derrida the perverse urge to use deliberately opaque language to prevent understanding.*)

And I'm now reading:

• The Qur'an: Text, Translation, and Commentary, translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali
  • Still sufficiently boring to kill.
• Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Vol. 2), edited by James Charlesworth
• Mormon Doctrine by Bruce McConkie
  • Very informative, and also occasionally offensive.  But more so informative.  And sometimes quite dull.  Still, a handy resource.
• Father, Son, and Spirit: The Trinity and John's Gospel by Andreas Köstenberger and Scott Swain
  • Very good so far!  It's more scholarly than I expected, and so I have high expectations for this book.
• Israel's 48 Signs of Christ's Return by Gordon Lindsay
  • Lame.  But brief, very brief.  It's more futurist eschatology, with a special focus on purported "signs" that the Second Coming is near... with the vast majority of those signs having no relation even attempted by the author, let alone successfully so.

* Back in the 90s, the University of Cambridge decided to give Jacques Derrida an honorary degree, and in response to this plan, a number of very eminent philosophers all signed a letter to the local paper denouncing that decision on the grounds that Derrida contributed nothing of value to the field.  You can read the letter here, and I highly recommend that you do.  But more important at the moment is that the page to which I just linked is actually by a Derrida supporter, who says--and I am not making this up--that clarity and coherence have a proven inverse relationship, and so naturally Derrida would want to be unclear, because otherwise he couldn't have such a coherent philosophy.  ...Let that soak in for a moment.  Savor the insanity.  As my best friend Daniel said succinctly when I showed it to him:

Q:  What time is it when your philosophy makes increasing clarity lead to decreased coherence?
A:  Time to get a new philosophy.

Discussion:

Now, I said last time that I'd be discussing a Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode in this post, and so I shall.  To set up, the episode ("Selfish" - season 10, episode 19) was based on the Caylee Anthony case from last year as well as the MMR vaccine controversy.  In the show, it's thought that a little 11-month-old girl named Sierra Walker was murdered by her teenage mother Ashlee, quite in parallel with the aforementioned real-life case.  However, while Casey Anthony was found guilty of murder, Law & Order twists things around by having Sierra's death actually as a result of encephalitis due to measles, which Sierra caught from the 4-year-old son of Monica Stewart, a neighborhood mother, who allowed her sick*, unimmunized child to go to the playground.  (*Because of the nature of measles, it is stated in the show that Monica was unaware at the time that her child was ill.)  That said, here are the most relevant quotations from the episode (I transcribed it, so I can't guarantee 100% verbal accuracy):

[At Monica's residence]
BENSON:  Monica Stewart?
MONICA:  What, did my neighbors call you?
BENSON:  Why would they do that?
MONICA:  Because they're upset at the choices I've made for my family.
STABLER:  Like not vaccinating your son?
MONICA:  I won't put my son at risk because Big Pharm and their lackeys in the media try and jam 'vaccination' down our throats.
STABLER:  Even if that puts him at risk?
MONICA:  What risk?  He had measles two weeks ago, and the immune system he was born with kicked in and now he's fine.
BENSON:  Well, Sierra Walker isn't fine.  She's dead after being infected by your son.
MONICA:  What?  What, that little girl from the news?  No, her mother killed her.
STABLER:  No, measles did, measles that she got from your boy.
MONICA:  No, I'm not responsible for other people's kids.  It's my family, it's my choice.  Go lecture someone else.

[At the Special Victims Unit]
STABLER:  That lady is a lunatic, what she's doing is a danger to society.
MUNCH:  Yeah, but, not illegal.
STABLER:  What, are you defending her?
BENSON:  Maybe he's right, Ell, I mean, sometimes parents know what's best for their kids.
STABLER:  Right, and we decide to vaccinate our kids so they'd be safe.
MUNCH:  Well that was your choice.  Telling parents how to raise their kids, that's a quick slide down the slippery slope of government tyranny.
BENSON:  Monica Stewart's son got the measles and nothing happened to him.  I mean, it's not so black and white.
STABLER:  Wait a minute, wait a minute, Sierra got the measles from Monica's son and died.  Now all of a sudden my little boy's at risk because of some nutcase mom?
MUNCH:  Well she's not the only nutcase mom.  Ashlee takes that prize.
STABLER:  But her kid was too young to be immunized.  Every child under a year old is at risk, it's just stupid not to vaccinate your children.

[Public statement by Ashlee's lawyer]
LAWYER:  The lax safeguards of the New York park system allow people with deadly and communicable diseases with the elderly and children.  We are suing the city of New York for a hundred million dollars, which pales in comparison to the priceless young life which was taken by Monica Stewart and the city.  Is your child next?

[In court at the trial of Monica Stewart on the charge of criminal negligent homicide - opening statements to jury]
CABOT:  This case boils down to one simple word: choice.  Not whether a parent has the choice to vaccinate their own child, but whether or not another parent can make that choice for your child.  This case isn't about her, it's about you, and you, and all of the people you love.  Because any one of you could have been in the park on the day that Monica Stewart decided to bring her unimmunized, sick child to play, thereby endangering each and every one of you.  And because of her choice, this little girl is dead.  Make no mistake: Sierra Walker would be alive today were it not for Monica Stewart's choice.
DEFENSE:  Ms. Cabot couldn't be more right.  Choice--we can choice how to pray, where to live, what to eat, and whether or not to immunize our children.  Ladies and gentlemen, the obligation right now is to defend your right to choose.  Don't let her [Cabot] take it away.

[In court - medical examiner Dr. Melinda Warner on stand]
WARNER:  Measles is one of the most communicable diseases on the planet.  It stays in the room for up to an hour after the infected person has left.  It's transmittable from up to 200 yards away.
CABOT:  I thought measles had been eradicated.
WARNER:  It was.  But right now England has a measles epidemic because people are refusing to immunize themselves and their children.  And the last serious outbreak here in the early 90s led to 123 deaths in unvaccinated children.
CABOT:  Why would people choose not to vaccinate their children against something so dangerous?
WARNER:  The most common reasons are for religious beliefs or suspicion about the science behind immunization.
CABOT:  Is the science behind immunization faulty?
WARNER:  Absolutely not.  Measles is totally preventable with the MMR vaccine.  Not being immunized is irresponsible.
CABOT:  Despite any side effects from the vaccine?
WARNER:  There is a minimal risk, but it's more dangerous to drive a car than to take the MMR vaccine.  Not being vaccinated can lead to infection, sickness, and death for unimmunized children and for babies who are too young to receive the vaccine.
CABOT:  Doctor, in your opinion, did Monica Stewart risk the public's health by not having her child vaccinated?
WARNER:  In my opinion, Ms. Stewart's negligence caused the death of Sierra Walker.
CABOT:  Nothing further.
DEFENSE:  Dr. Warner, those side effects to the MMR vaccine you mentioned--what are they?
WARNER:  Deafness, seizures, coma, permanent brain damage... but again, these are very, very rare.
DEFENSE:  So rare that the U.S. government has set up an agency to compensate victims of these serious side effects, am I correct?
WARNER:  Yes, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
DEFENSE:  And what is the most serious 'injury' that can occur with the MMR vaccine?  I think you left it off your list.
WARNER:  Death.  But the number is miniscule, possibly zero.
DEFENSE:  I bet that's small comfort to the parents of the children who die as a result of those side effects.
CABOT:  Objection!
DEFENSE:  Uh, withdrawn.  Dr. Warner, are there any laws in New York that can force a person to vaccinate themselves or their children against measles or other diseases?
WARNER:  Yes, in order to enter school, a child must be immunized, unless it goes against the family's religious beliefs or when the child is being homeschooled, in which case no one would know.
DEFENSE:  Monica Stewart's child is four years old and not yet in school, so she isn't breaking any laws.  In fact, doctor, isn't it true that unless a quarantine is placed in effect, no person can be forced to undergo any medical treatment against their spiritual beliefs?
WARNER:  Yes.

[In court - Monica Stewart on stand.]
MONICA:  I read everything I could get my hands on.  Books, articles, journals, the Internet.  In the end, I was just uncomfortable with the side effects.
DEFENSE:  So you didn't just wake up one day and say, "I'm not going to vaccinate my son against measles."  You considered every option before making the most educated decision.
MONICA:  Yes.  I love my child.  That's why I chose not to immunize him.  And I believe with all my heart that God wouldn't want me to do this.
DEFENSE:  Thank you.
CABOT:  But you didn't think about how your choice would affect other children.
MONICA:  Sierra Walker isn't my child.  I can't make choices for her.
CABOT:  But you did!  You made a choice, and now she's dead.  Your actions are directly responsible her death.  If she hadn't contracted measles, she would still be alive.
DEFENSE:  Is there a question here, Your Honor?
JUDGE:  Is there, Ms. Cabot?
CABOT:  Ms. Stewart, what is your medical degree in?
MONICA:  I don't have one.
CABOT:  But you were making medical choices on behalf of your child.
MONICA:  Just because I don't have a degree, doesn't mean I can't be an informed parent.
CABOT:  You chose your 'informed' opinion over that of people who do in fact have a medical degree and understand the science behind vaccinations and recommend that all kids be vaccinated.
MONICA:  I know what's best for my child.
CABOT:  If you know what's best, and the doctors are of a different opinion, then it stands to reason that they don't have your child's best interests at heart.
MONICA:  Their 'science' is just another opinion.
CABOT:  Your opinion killed a little girl.
DEFENSE:  Your Honor...!
CABOT:  I'm just trying to show that if Ms. Stewart had vaccinated her child, Sierra Walker would be alive today.
MONICA:  I'm not sure that's true.
CABOT:  You're not?
MONICA:  That woman was a horrible mother.  It was just a matter of time until something tragic happened.
CABOT:  You're the one on trial, Ms. Stewart.
MONICA:  Exactly.  And how fair is that?  I'm the good mother.  I make sure my child eats well, is taken care of.  She buried her daughter in a shallow grave!
CABOT:  Yes.  She buried the child that you murdered.

[At the Special Victims Unit]
CABOT:  You should've seen the look on the jury's faces when she started playing the blame game.  I predict they come back before noon with a guilty verdict.
STABLER:  Alright, well, I'll drink to that.  Still think she's innocent?
BENSON:  I think Monica has a point.  Ashlee was a bad mother who did everything wrong while Monica was trying to do everything right.
STABLER:  Monica exposed innocent children to a deadly disease.
BENSON:  She didn't know that her kid was sick.  He didn't have any symptoms when she took him to the park.
STABLER:  And that's the problem with measles, that you're infectious before you even get the spots.  Now if Monica wants to take her kid and live in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, fine, but the minute she walks out that door she's got to play by society's rules.
CABOT:  Or somebody truly innocent ends up paying the price.

[At Special Victims Unit - after Monica found not guilty by jury]
BENSON:  I gotta say, this one hurt.  [She has a copy of the New York Ledger with the headline, "Anti-Vaccine Mom Gets Victory Shot"]
STABLER:  I think it wasn't even the case, it was a personality contest.  The jury liked the defendant more than they liked the victim.
CABOT:  Tell me about it.  I talked to them after the verdict.  They all thought Monica should've vaccinated her child, but they did not think that Sierra's death was her fault.
STABLER:  Eh, they passed the buck.
BENSON:  It's tragedy all around.  Both mothers' lives are ruined.

The other day, I watched the episode again with Daniel (who nearly demolished half my house while he was here...) so that we could have an interesting discussion about it.   (We also watched an episode of regular Law & Order ("Rapture" - season 19, episode 425), which was rather fascinating in its own right.)  I haven't had a discussion that stimulating in quite some time!  We both agree that Monica Stewart is, to some degree, morally culpable for Sierra's death.  That much seems fairly uncontroversial.  We also, after some discussion, both came to the conclusion that the jury rendered the correct verdict in the case--although I will admit that my initial impressions were somewhat the opposite.  First of all, it seems that the defense was strictly correct in maintaining that Monica had not broken any law.  It also appears that a guilty verdict might have constituted 'legislating from the bench', and Daniel and I both frown quite strongly on that.  I think that perhaps, had Monica been aware of her child's illness at the time, a somewhat stronger case for criminal negligent homicide could have been made--though as Daniel noted, this case seems more as though it might be better pursued as a wrongful death civil suit.  (I'm of the opinion that Monica's portrayal in the episode is one with an attitude of indifference, and I believe Daniel concurred near the end of our discussion.)  Still, there are always problems with setting dangerous precedent, and Daniel and I are both strongly enough libertarian with respect to freedom of conscience as to be quite wary here.  So what do you all think?  Is Monica Stewart personally culpable for the death of Sierra Walker?  Should Monica have been found guilty?  Would minor alterations to the scenario change your verdict?

Some other thoughts: I think that Monica's defense of "not my child, not my responsibility" is, to a great degree, a load of crap.  It seems quite clear that, if it is the case that Monica's decision (to not only leave her child unimmunized, but bring her child into contact with those who cannot be immunized) directly resulted in Sierra's death, then some manner of responsibility would be present.  There is a sense in which we really are all responsible for one another's wellbeing, morally or otherwise, at least to some extent.  Moreover, I think the defense really blundered in attempting to attack the underlying medical science.  Better to simply emphasize Monica's freedom from any legal guilt and urge the jury to adhere closely to the law.  On the other hand, the prosecution pulling the "Are you a doctor?!?!?!??" card doesn't seem to have been a great move either.  The fact of the matter is that, except in very exceptional circumstances, parents are the ones ultimately authorized to make medical decisions on behalf of their children, and so while they should heed expert counsel very closely, in my opinion, it is still their decision in this case--and while that poses problems, the alternative is far more frightening.

Daniel and I then proceeded to discuss a second case, Employment Division, Oregon Department of Human Resources v. Smith (494 U.S. 872), which he brought up.  Here are the basic details of what happened.  Two men (Alfred Smith and Galen Black) work at a drug rehab clinic, where part of their contract involves abstaining from all illegal drugs.  They subsequently partake in a Native American Church ceremony involving the use of peyote, an illegal drug.  And while some states have legal exceptions for religious use, Oregon is not one of them.  So the men are found to have used illegal drugs contrary to their contract, and thus are fired for breach of contract.  The men file for unemployment benefits, and Oregon denies their claim on the grounds that their termination was for work-related misconduct.  The case was finally decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1990 in favor of the state.  Daniel and I both disagree, however, with the majority opinion delivered by Justice Scalia (with whom we both frequently agree), which essentially gutted the Sherbert Test (derived from the 1963 Supreme Court case Sherbert v. Verner (374 U.S. 398)), a set of criteria intended to determine whether or not the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment has been violated.  Simply put, the court must assess (1) whether the individual can claim sincerity in their religious belief, (2) whether the government is placing any substantial burden on that belief, (3) whether there is a compelling state interest, and (4) whether the government could've done all this an easier way.  I'm inclined to think that the Sherbert Test is a fairly decent rubric, at least within the realm of plausible such rubrics.  The case also had a concurring position by Justice O'Connor in which she stuck to the Sherbert Test and decided that the law was acceptable under it, whereas the dissenting opinion by Justice Blackmun (and joined by two others) was that the law failed the Sherbert Test.  Daniel and I are both somewhat torn between these two opinions, though I tend to side more with O'Connor on this one.  (Now there's something I never thought I'd say...)  What do you think?

Finally, Daniel and I had a rousing conversation about the philosophy of law in general.  (I got him a book about it a while back, the Oxford Readings in Philosophy volume The Philosophy of Law, edited by Ronald M. Dworkin.  I finished it before the end of the semester, while he's just recently managed to get through the first few essays.)  The topic we opted to discuss is this: what is law?  Two important positions for comparison: in the legal positivist tradition, law consists of a set of rules, or 'laws'.  (Consequently, in any case in which the rules are unclear, the judiciary must simply make a decision, and thus 'legislation from the bench' is quite inevitable.)  Dworkin's position, however, is that law consists of both rules and principles, where the latter are simply maxims generally agreed upon by society, such as, "No one may profit from his/her own wrong."  (Thus, rather than legislate from the bench, the judiciary is responsible for turning from rules to principles, weighing these principles, and rendering a verdict--all still from within the bounds of the 'law'.)  He and I both find ourselves somewhere between these two camps.  On the one hand, the positivist position is untenable in our eyes.  On the other hand, precisely what constitutes a "principle" is somewhat vague and problematic.

By the way, I should note that this is not merely an idle question for discussion but of little consequence.  Take, for example, the Free Exercise Clause.  Either this is a rule, or it is not.  Suppose that positivism is true for a moment.  If the clause is a rule, then it must be absolute, for rules have no exceptions unless specified explicitly, and so a positivist must then be a First Amendment absolutist.  If the clause is not a rule, however, then it is not a rule and so is not actually of legal force, strictly speaking, but rather may be construed as a helpful suggestion.  If positivism is false and Dworkin's position is correct, however, the Free Exercise Clause may be construed as other than a rule yet more than a suggestion--in short, perhaps, as a principle.

So, again, what do you think--both about the cases and about what law itself is?

(Oh, and by the way, please pray for Daniel's family--his grandfather finally passed away this morning.)

Gratia vobis.

Currently Perspectives on an Evolving Creation see related

"To Thy blest cross, O Christ, we come,
And falling down before Thee,
And humbly make confession full
Of all our sins before Thee.
For Thou Thyself art very God,
And freely cam'st to save us;
And in our flesh the fetters broke
With which our sins enslave us.
Therefore we own with grateful hearts
The joy our Saviour brought us,
Who came to earth, and in our sins
With love and pity sought us."

--"To Thy Blest Cross, O Christ, We Come"

Gratia vobis et pax a Deo Patre et Domino nostro Iesu Christo.

I think if it weren't for hydrocodone, I would have gone crazy by now.  The actual pain from the surgical incisions isn't really that bad... but the pain is in addition to my pretty irritating base level of pain, and I think I might've gotten scratched with a surgical implement or something under my tongue.  So yeah, thank God for painkillers.  At least the swelling is going down.

I figure that I might as well talk about the past couple sermons at my church.  Lately my church has been doing a sermon series based on Gary Chapman's The Five Love Languages.  It sounds pretty cheesy, yes, but so far they haven't done terribly with it.  Last week's sermon was devoted to "Quality Time", and my senior pastor was preaching.  ...He managed to find an occasion in the sermon to explain what Gnosticism and Docetism are, and why we need to guard against false teaching.  Have I mentioned lately how much I love my pastor?  The scary thing was that he actually managed to make it somehow fit the sermon; that's talent.  The sermon was based on 1 John 1:1-4, while this past Sunday's ("Words of Affirmation") was rooted more in Proverbs 15:1 and 18:17-21.  My associate pastor took this one, and it was geared towards the church kids, so with that taken into consideration, it was a decent sermon.  Mostly just moral exhortation; God didn't even get mentioned until about halfway through.

Yesterday I did some more work with the church library.  We made some good progress; by my calculations, we catalogued 169 books and got quite a few more sorted.  So it was productive, and I'll be tackling some more of the library in a week.

At any rate, these are the books I've finished reading since my last post:

• In the Shadow of the Temple: Jewish Influences on Early Christianity by Oskar Skarsaune
• In the Language of Kings: An Anthology of Mesoamerican Literature, Pre-Columbian to the Present, eds. Miguel Leon-Portilla and Earl Shorris
• The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey
• The Essence of Religion by Ludwig Feuerbach

Skarsaune's book was excellent.  Like I said before, I highly recommend it to any and all readers.  It does a masterful job at presentation and covers a wide breadth of topics in a fairly natural order.  I could wish that Skarsaune's treatment of proselytism and conversion in Judaism and Christianity had interacted a bit with, e.g., Zeba Crook's superb Reconceptualising Conversion, but that's a relatively small complaint, and probably not a terribly reasonable one in light of Skarsaune's focus.

I'm glad to be done with all the Mesoamerican literature.  A lot of it was interesting, sure, but much of it was scarcely comprehensible to me.  I suspect that's more my fault than the literature's or the translators', so perhaps I'll glance back at select portions if I ever get a better grasp on Mesoamerican culture... but some of that stuff was dang trippy, IMHO.

Hal Lindsey's book was definitely... interesting.  There were a lot of flaws, but... let me just say a few words in Lindsey's defense.  In this book, at least, he did not set himself up as any sort of prophetic figure.  He explicitly stated several times that he had no idea exactly when things were going to end, and that his predictions were only speculations based on his fallible interpretation of Scripture and his analysis of current trends.  He did his best to be very, very clear about this.  And he earns a little bit of respect from me for doing so.  The frightening people are the ones who do act as though they were prophets, whether claiming it explicitly or being a bit more implicit about it.  So I appreciate this degree of humility from Lindsey.  However, on the whole, Lindsey's book had a lot of flaws.  I got the impression that he largely deemed other eschatological views as being completely unworthy of discussion.  The exegetical and hermeneutical gymnastics into which he was forced didn't even cause him to bat an eye; to him they were obvious, because clearly pre-millennial futurism was the plain teaching of Scripture.  He did briefly mention that post-millennialism and amillennialism are out there... but post-millennialism was put down as a dead view, and amillennialism was tarred as a denial of the 'plain teaching' of Revelation.  And, of course, the text was saturated with a rather fundamentalist view of religion and society.

Feuerbach was pretty laughable.  He never really seemed to argue for his position, per se.  He more or less took it for granted as a general perspective and then rammed selective proof-texts into place, often while employing blatant non sequiturs with a bit of nonsense on the side.  At least it was a quick read; I'd hate to have suffered through much more of it.

Things that I'm currently reading:

• The Qur'an: Text, Translation, and Commentary, trans. Abdullah Yusuf Ali
• Perspectives on an Evolving Creation, ed. Keith Miller
• Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Vol. 1: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments), ed. James Charlesworth
• American Islam: Growing Up Muslim in America by Richard Wormser
• Christianity in Crisis by Hank Hanegraaff

The Qur'an is, I have to admit, phenomenally boring.  I'm sorry, I really am.  I know I'm probably not grasping the full majesty of it, because I'm reading a translation.  And, for that matter, a somewhat King James-y translation.  I have a feeling that if I were reading it in Arabic, I would enjoy it more.  I have a Qur'an reciter on my computer, and I enjoy listening to it.  It's melodious and beautiful (but, I would argue, not half as wonderful as the Psalms are when chanted or sung in Hebrew).  And perhaps if I were seeking spiritual nourishment from the Qur'an's pages, it would take on a sacred quality that would make it enlivening somehow.  But... as it stands, I find it rather dull.  This is just my subjective, unsympathetic take on the text, of course.  And if I were persuaded of the truth of Islam, no doubt my perspective would change to a much more positive one.  And I would never attempt a real critique of the Qur'an without attempting to familiarize myself with the major commentators, trying to grasp the historical context, investigating the defenses used in Muslim apologetics, etc.  But Muhammad's arguments against his opponents are often poor, and at times the portrayal of God in the Qur'an falls short of both the Old Testament and the New Testament.  The "final revelation" seems to contain little of use that can't be found better in the literature that preceded it.  The occasional portrayals of Christianity are uniformly inaccurate, and many of the stories borrowed from the Old Testament or Jewish tradition end up stripped of most details, which to me gives the impression of being a bit botched.  (Yusuf Ali defends the Qur'anic use of material as being more "spiritual" and therefore superior, to which I can only say... no.  No, it doesn't come across as more "spiritual" at all.)  Now, I should again emphasize that I'm reading Yusuf Ali's translation of the Qur'an, not the Qur'an itself in Arabic, so I'll grant that the tone--which is really my biggest gripe--may owe more to Yusuf Ali than to Muhammad.  But at any rate, I've been slacking off on my Qur'an reading lately.

Now, as for Miller's book, I think it's excellent.  I can't say I agree with everything--particularly, I wasn't keen on the first half of Hyer's chapter--but on the whole, it is just a good book.  (I do have some other complaints: chiefly, there wasn't enough direct interaction with creationist literature for my taste.  The chapter on astronomy, for example, mentioned briefly a few creationist explanations for the starlight problem, but Humphrey's alternative cosmology was omitted.  So my one big gripe with this book is that it doesn't interact sufficiently with the creationist arguments and explanations, and even where it does so, it doesn't cite specific documents readily enough.  I think that would've been a big asset; hopefully some other books on the topic do that job.)  I was especially pleased with the chapter--I think it may have been Chapter 4--which dealt with science and miracles.  It was an excellent treatment.

Most of my readers are probably aware, I think, that I am a theistic evolutionist.  I used to be a rather committed young-earth creationist (YEC).  Gradually, I became more and more convinced of the scientific credibility of evolution, as I found more and more tidbits of data that were difficult to accomodate within a YEC framework.  Finally, I found myself personally at the point where I couldn't maintain YECism anymore.  At the same time, I observed the discourse taking place in the Natural Science board of TheologyWeb.  To say that I was underwhelmed by the YEC performance there would be an understatement.  Intellectually, there's just no contest: the evolutionists have consistently refuted the YEC case time and time again, and the YECs have not been up to par.  And if this were just any generic case, I'd hardly be surprised... but the YECs have included even some rather prominent figures: Dr. Jonathan Sarfati, a famous creationist author who actually got banned from TWeb (and that is tough to do!); Dr. John Baumgardner, a creationist geophysicist who was part of the creationist RATE project (you may recall my report on a RATE conference from back when I was yet a YEC); and perhaps Jorge Fernandez, whose work I remembered from the True.Origin Archive (a rather incomplete creationist counter to the Talk.Origins Archive, which was also influential in my shift of opinion--although some things are handled very, very poorly at Talk.Origins), if I'm not mistaken that it's one and the same guy.  If anyone should be able to handle that subject in that section, these are excellent candidates, and yet the paucity of their case was plainly evident for public viewing.

Now, let me also interject that it isn't uncommon in there for some of the evolutionists to act like jerks to the creationists, or to use the occasional bad argument.  I would personally advise evolutionists to just stick to the facts and avoid the use of harsh rhetoric against creationists, because this just feeds some YEC perceptions of a world of hostile forces arrayed against them and armed with bluster rather than truth.  In other words, I think that Ben's part of the discussion on the subject archived here is spot-on and definitely worth reading.  Of course, I also realize that many creationists have nothing but absolute scorn for (esp. theistic) evolutionists--see, for example, this recent sample of creationist fulminations, including such 'Christ-honoring' gems as:

• "I have to say that I like atheists better than I like 'Christian' evolutionists (which is actually an oxymoron, hence the quotes)."
  • Ah, interesting.  Seems that it's impossible for an evolutionist to be a Christian now, at least according to this blogger.  Hey, contributors to Perspectives on an Evolving Creation?  Yeah, sorry to tell you this, but I guess you aren't saved after all.  Have fun in everlasting fire for seeing Genesis and the scientific evidence in a different light than this guy on the Internet and his ideological compatriots.  Apparently Christ isn't enough now.  (Sorry, Jesus, looks like you've been demoted from your position of absolute supremacy.)  You've got to adhere to a particular school of protological thought as well.  Remember, everyone: "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead and also that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, you will be saved!" (Romans 10:9 YECV)
• "There are a multitude of powerful heresies that go along with accepting a position like theistic evolution."
  • ...Such as?  I can personally say that I am both a theistic evolutionist and a fully orthodox Christian.  I affirm in their entirety the early creeds of the church that define precisely what orthodoxy is.  Seems I can't think of a single recognized heresy that follows from theistic evolutionism.  Arianism?  Nope, clearly not.  Same with Sabellianism.  How about Macedonianism?  No, no connection there.  Alright, well let's see, how about Gnosticism?  No, no reason why a theistic evolutionist should be a Gnostic.  Same goes for Docetism and adoptionism.  Perhaps Nestorianism or Monophysitism?  Nay, no such luck there.  Perhaps some heresies as specified outside of the creed, such as Donatism or Pelagianism?  Nope, also completely independent of evolution.  Well, I suppose I'm just all befuddled then.  Can't seem to find this "multitude of powerful heresies" anywhere!  Perhaps the aforementioned blogger will do us all a kindness and enlighten us with some substantiating details on this point.
• "One has a better chance of being a Christian Moslem than a Christian Evolutionist."
  • Oh?  And here I thought silly things like the Bible and maybe even the ancient Christian creeds mattered.  Because see, here's the thing: the New Testament's descriptions of what one needs to do to be saved are compatible with being an evolutionist, but not with being a Muslim (in the sense of believing in Muhammad's message, not in the etymological sense).  Can an evolutionist believe that Christ was the only-begotten Son of God, born of the virgin Mary, performed mighty works, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, died, was buried, rose from the dead, and subsequently ascended to the right hand of the Father, from whence he shall return to judge the living and the dead?  Absolutely.  Can a Muslim believe the same?  Not on your life.  Seems that one has a vastly better chance of being a Christian evolutionist than a Christian Muslim after all!  At least judging by biblical standards.  Perhaps the blogger is endeavoring to one-up Scripture?

I have no problem, naturally, with many, even perhaps most, creationists.  I was one once, and I have no particular desire to force my new views down the throats of those still on that side of the fence.  I have quite a few YEC friends, and some of the YECs who read my blog on occasion are immensely intelligent and wonderful brothers in Christ.  I do, however, object to the sort of remarks as quoted above.  If one wishes to affirm a belief that evolution is unbiblical, fine.  I once believed quite firmly that that was the case, just as I now believe that it was not.  But this is a natural disagreement.  If one wishes, however, to denounce evolutionists as damnable heretics who only make a pretense of Christianity but in fact are set against Christ and the kingdom of God... well, needless to say, this is an unfathomably grave charge against fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, and is furthermore an offense against the sacred unity of Christ's church.  (May God forgive him of this sin.)

Anyway, getting back to my own story, the two of these things (re-assessment of the scientific evidence, and TheologyWeb) together, along with an increasing openness to seeing the early portions of Genesis as narrative but not meant to convey a straightforward depiction of history, led to my turn from YECism to a tentative belief in theistic evolution.  Once I had done so, I can certainly attest that I saw things in a different light!  Of course, I don't have all the answers and never will, but I look forward to the project of constructing my protology anew.  I think this book will be quite helpful in the task.  I hope to do a more detailed post on it later.

(Also, let me add that any of my creationist readers are welcome to jump in the fray over at TheologyWeb, and I wish you the best of luck!  And creationists, if you want to understand the other side or at least be challenged, read Perspectives on an Evolving Creation.)

As for Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, I'm loving it.  I've finished just a few documents so far, including 1 Enoch, 2 Enoch, and 3 Enoch.  Some portions are dull, but others are absolutely fascinating.  The Sibylline Oracles are up next.  I'm glad I finally have these volumes to read.  I've been meaning to get around to all these texts eventually.  Things I'm finding interesting:

• In the traditions I'm used to, Michael is typically portrayed as the mighty 'warrior angel', while Gabriel is the 'angel of revelation'.  But the Enochic tradition has Gabriel as the warrior angel, while Michael is the angel of mercy and benevolence.  I suppose it just never occurred to me that the roles of the angels might vary within the diversity of Second Temple Judaism.  Don't know why it never occurred to me, though.
• The Enochic literature has a heavy focus on the rebellious angels, using them to interpret the story of the Nephilim in Genesis 6.  In this literature, the imprisoned angels often beg Enoch to intercede before God on their behalf.  And God's answer tends to be, "No, screw them."  ...I'm paraphrasing a bit there.
• Also, God and Enoch point out to the rebellious angels that the angels are supposed to intercede on behalf of mankind, yet here the angels are asking a man to intercede on their behalf.
• In 2 Enoch, Melchizedek is Noah's nephew.  Very interesting.  Also, Melchizedek is conceived apart from sexual intercourse, although the footnotes make very clear that this is not a virgin birth and likely has no connection to the story of Jesus (and because of the chronology, it would likely be Christian influence on that portion of 2 Enoch, not the other way around).  Anyway, in the text, it seems that one of the archangels (Michael in one recension, Gabriel in another) takes Melchizedek to Eden before the Flood.
• 3 Enoch is very foreign to most trends in Second Temple Judaism.  This is where we get Metatron, the archangel-ized Enoch, as "the lesser YHWH".  3 Enoch is thought to date from around the fifth or sixth century AD; it's most likely post-Talmudic, at the least.
• 3 Enoch elaborates on the ideas in Daniel about nations having angelic 'princes'.  Here, each of the seventy-two nations has an angelic advocate in the heavenly court.  Michael is, naturally, the Prince of Israel, while the Princes of Rome and Persia, Samma'el and Dubbi'el respectively, are basically affiliated with Satan, as I suppose is deemed appropriate for nations opposed to Israel.  I can only wonder, though, how the author would have worked out this angelology in light of the rise and fall of nations.  For example, would there now be an angelic 'Prince of the USA'?  Or, perhaps more potentially on the mind of the author: what happened when the reign of Solomon led to the Divided Kingdom?  Was there a Prince of Israel and a separate Prince of Judah?  Whence the new angel?  Is one promoted every time a nation secedes?  If a kingdom splits, which one gets the original?  Or, if both nations have the same angelic prince, how does he represent their conflicting interests in the heavenly court?
• I will always be fascinated by Merkabah mysticism.

With regard to American Islam, I'm nearly done--it isn't very long--I can definitely say that at least the beginning gives a very 'pro-Islam' perspective on history, in a way that seems like a rather selective use of facts.  Sad to say, it isn't really a terribly informative book, although at least it's brief and easy reading.  Makes a nice break from the weightier tomes I'm working through right now.

Finally, Christianity in Crisis is a classic book--using Hanegraaff's annoying penchant for acronymns--critiquing the Word of Faith movement.  It's very well documented, and so my only complaint thus far is that the book has endnotes instead of footnotes.  This is exactly the sort of book that needs footnotes, because the footnotes contain plenty of substantiating quotes from prominent Word of Faith teachers, and those quotes are quite damning.  I can only ask... what are these people thinking?  Also, it's pretty easy to tell that Hanegraaff is the successor of Walter Martin.  But, aside from that, it's a pretty good book thus far.

So far this year, I've finished 51 books.  I'm rather pleased with that sort of progress, considering that it isn't even June yet.  And especially since some of those books have been quite long (e.g., Jehovah's Witnesses: Proclaimers of God's Kingdom; Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature; In the Language of Kings: An Anthology of Mesoamerican Literature, Pre-Columbian to the Present).

Anyway, since in my last post I blabbed on and on about the sites I visit on the Internet, and since I feel the strange need to talk about something besides what I'm reading, I figure this time I'll talk about television.

• House, M.D. - Classic.  I'd like to think that I'm at least a marginally nicer person than Dr. House, but probably not by much some days.  (I still can't believe how the last season ended...)
• 24 - I think they may have managed to hit the maximum amount of action that can possibly be packed into each episode while still retaining a thrilling plot.  WIN.
• Burn Notice - This show is just great.  I'm very eager for the new season to begin.
• Law and Order: SVU - I like the other 'Law and Order' variants, but SVU is hands-down my favorite.
• NCIS - Another winning show.  Mark Harmon is a great actor, as are the rest of them.

These are really the primary shows I watch, when I have the opportunity.  But I caught the series premier of Mental last night, and it was excellent, so if I can remember to keep watching it regularly, it may well earn a place on that list.

Also, can I just say that 'Law and Order: SVU' is a great show for raising ethical and legal issues?  For example, I watched an episode a few nights ago ("Blinded" - season 9, episode 7) in which a pedophile turned out to be a schizophrenic who genuinely believed that he was saving the girls whom he, in fact, was raping.  When he was put back on medication and became lucid, he insisted--against the wishes of both his defense attorney and the prosecutor--that he be sent to Louisiana and given the death penalty.  But... what do you do with a case like this?  He committed insidious, despicable acts while under the delusion of a mental illness that led him to believe he was actually defending the victims against those very same acts as committed by others.  I'm curious to know the ethical intuitions of some of my readers.

Another episode I watched recently ("Confession" - season 10, episode 2) involves a 17-year-old boy who confesses having urges towards pedophilia - he believes he was born that way - and wants to get help to stop his urges for his younger stepbrother.  The result, naturally, is a great deal of family strife, but the interesting part is the character Jake Berlin, who operates a website struggling with pedophiliac urges.  The site features non-pornographic pictures of children and promotes the motto "Look but don't touch".  Berlin self-identifies as a "pedosexual" who never engages in pedophilia, and who in fact is able to monitor users of his website to keep them in check as well.  When confronted by SVU detectives Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson about 'pedosexuality', Berlin argues his case from parallels with homosexuality--and he notes that he never goes after children because he knows they can't consent, and he's a law-abiding man.  I bought the episode on iTunes so I could find the conversation (14:10--15:22), since I can't seem to find the clip online:

Berlin:  I don't get the appeal [of little boys].  I'm into little girls.
Stabler:  You're a steaming bag of crap that I would love to shove down a hole.
Berlin:  I'm not the enemy.  I look, I don't touch.
Benson:  So you're a good pedophile.
Berlin:  I prefer the term "pedosexual".  I spend every waking moment controlling my appetites.  I can't change who I am.  I... I was born this way.
Stabler:  No one's born a deviant.
Berlin:  Homosexuals were called deviants, and now it's widely accepted that their orientation was hard-wired at birth.  Just like mine.  I wasn't abused as a child.  I mean, I don't choose to love little girls, any more than they choose to love the same gender or you choose to love women.
Stabler:  Gay people don't have sex with children.
Berlin:  Neither do I.  I admit I like delicious little angels, ages 3 to 9.  There's nothing I can do except keep my distance, since they can't legally consent.
Benson:  Your website is like a kiddy treasure map, what happens if other predators don't follow your rules?
Berlin:  They suffer the consequences.
Stabler:  How do you know that?
Berlin:  Well, a sexually satisfied pedophile loves to share, and since there's no anonymity on my website, believe me, I'd know.  And I have names, addresses...  I take the law very seriously.
Stabler:  So do I.

Thoughts on Berlin's arguments?

There was a third SVU episode I wanted to mention, but this post is long enough, so I'll save it for next time.  (Besides, the system managed to lose the lengthy portion I had about it, and I'm not in the mood right now to redo all of that.)  I would like some feedback on the ethical and legal questions raised by the two other SVU episodes, though.

Gratia vobis.